


Grand Piano

by orphan_account



Series: Alpha/Omega AU [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, And Annie gets to molest Armin so there's that, Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Grief/Mourning, I don't think anyone is ever happy at any point, I guess Eren Mikasa and Armin cuddle so they might be happy then, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Kinda, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Non-Explicit Sex, Omega Verse, Pain, She likes to pull hair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 18:37:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3947428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Armin’s 11 the first time he goes into heat. After that there's Eren, smelling like cinnamon and perfection, Annie who is cool and crisp and climbs inside of him so easily, and the moment he's honestly so glad it's Marco who died and not His Alpha and grateful that it's Jean who's broken and not himself.</p><p>One Shot, set before Four Door Aventador</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grand Piano

**Author's Note:**

> Just Armin’s history up to Four Door Aventador. There was really no way to make this fit into that story so. ...yes. Here you go. Everyone is aged up a touch, so the wall comes down when they’re 12 and they’d be 17 in 4DA.  
> Grisha is max level shady. Stage Five Shady. STAGE FIVE.  
> Extra Warning because everyone here is a kid/preteen/teenager and there are sexual situations. I mean, things that go without saying but...still need to be said. Also for vague references to alpha female anatomy.

_Am I just a fool?_

_Blind and stupid for loving you_

_Am I just a silly girl?_

_So young and naíve to think you were the one who came to take claim of this heart_

_Cold-hearted, shame you'll remain just a frame in the dark_

_(And now the people)_

_The people are talking, the people are saying_

_That you have been playing my heart like a grand piano_

_The people are talking, the people are saying_

_That you have been playing my heart like a grand piano_

_So play on, play on, play on_

_Am I queen of fools?_

_Wrapped up in lies and foolish jewels_

_What do I see in you?_

_Maybe I'm addicted to all the things you do_

_'Cause I keep thinking you were the one who came to take claim of this heart_

_Cold-hearted, shame you'll remain just a frame in the dark_

Grand Piano~Nicki Minaj

 

000000

 

Armin’s 11 the first time he goes into heat. He’s at home for the second day in a row with a slight fever, too sick to go outside according to his grandfather. And yet, fever aside, he didn’t really feel ‘sick’ exactly. He felt hot and sweaty, his stomach was cramping painfully and when he’d woken up that morning he’d found that the sunlight drifting in through his windows hurt his eyes and made his head pound.

His grandfather had found him huddled in the darkest corner of his bedroom, stripped to only his sleeping shirt and trembling. He’d been put back into bed and had a cool rag put over his eyes and his grandfather drew the curtains, dimming the room a bit, before leaving him alone with strict orders to stay put.

He’d tossed and turned for a while then decided to read to pass the time. He really didn’t feel that bad, just...strange. He wished his grandfather would let Eren and Mikasa come by but he’d turned them away the day before, insisting that Armin would  be out to play as soon as he was up for it. It seemed silly, since they’d been over while he was sick before, but it wasn’t his place to argue with adults.

At some point he got it into his head to drag all of his bedding and all of the spare linens in his closet under his desk and forming some kind of squishy cushioned area. He draped one blanket over the desk to block out any light and create a kind of barrier against the rest of the world. He wasn’t sure why he needed a barrier, couldn’t begin to even process the thought let alone come up with reasoning, but he found when he crawled amongst the linens and drew the makeshift curtain closed that he felt much happier. Still hot and uncomfortable, sure, but happier.

The next day, however, he’d just be sad and would occasionally, without warning, sob hysterically into the nest of blankets he’d made himself. He was unable to focus to read or do much of anything, really, except lie there. His grandfather would appear a few times, trying to coax him from under the desk with food and water and soft words but Armin would just cry harder, unable to understand what was wrong and unwilling to face his grandfather when he was in such a state.

He felt wretched and in moments when he wasn’t crying or whining he was consumed by a terrible gnawing emptiness on the inside. The pain in his stomach was even worse and near constant, instead of the occasional waves of the day before, a burning pinch that spread outwards from below his belly button.

At another point he would become aware that he was...leaking. Warm slick fluid was clinging to his thighs and when he reached to find the source the world went white as an unfamiliar almost but not quite painful feeling rushed up to greet him.

His mind was a little clearer after that; clear enough for him to resolve to not repeat that bit of exploration.

The third day he was lonely and furious. He screamed and growled and snarled any time he heard someone outside of his door. Unlike the day before he did venture out into the main room, but only for the sake of throwing things and tearing apart everything that wasn’t part of his desk hideaway.

It hurt on the inside, worse than ever, and he felt like he was burning up all over. He knew something was missing, knew he needed something to make everything he was feeling go away. He didn’t know what it was or house to find it and instead he was left wanting to peel back his skin to get to the itchy painful hot feeling right underneath.

He’d shout himself hoarse and dizzy, cut open his knuckles and dig long bleeding rows into his skin, then finally collapse back in his safe place for lack of anything else to do. Someone would, eventually, creep into his room and pull back the sheet to peer in at him.

Armin would bare his teeth and growl but his eyes were bleary and unfocused and he lacked the energy to do anything more than that. Then something would catch his nose, pushing past the haze of anger. It was a dark musky scent, warm, thick, and kind of spicy, like cinnamon, and utterly perfect. Something steeped in that scent was draped over him and he wrapped himself around it, sighing.

It wasn’t what he needed but it was close enough to push back some of his anger.

After that day things got hazy and he lost himself.

When it passed Armin would wake up sore, sticky, fingers in odd places and completely covered with...stuff. And very confused as to why he was sprawled under his desk and twisted up with what had to have been every single sheet in the house and had his face buried in a shirt that, once he got a good look at it, wasn’t his own.

It was familiar.

He felt disgusting and was happy to find a basin of tepid water in the middle of his completely destroyed bedroom. He frowned unhappily at the damage but focused on rinsing himself off and not thinking about what had happened to him.

He found pajamas to pull on then stumbled out of his room, body protesting the entire way, and into the kitchen where he found his father father and Grisha Yeager sitting at the small table, sipping coffee. His grandfather looked as tired as Armin felt, skin sallow and dark circles under his eyes.

Eren’s father, however, smiled brightly when he laid eyes on Armin then gestured for him to take a seat. He did and food was placed in front of him; for the first time he realized he was starving and couldn’t recall the last time he’d eaten. Forgetting his usual manners he began to shovel food into his mouth.

He could feel his grandfather and Grisha watching him, was aware of the thoughtfully amused face his best friend’s father was making, but thought nothing of it.

While he was inhaling his food Grisha would start talking, explaining that he knew exactly what Armin had just been through and why. He apologized for not being present to explain but he hadn’t expected Armin to present so young. Armin’s grandfather would sigh, a sadly defeated noise, and rub a hand over his eyes.

Armin was, according to Dr Yeager, something called an Omega. Once, before humanity had come to live in the walls, they’d been more common but now they were very rare, more or less extinct now. Not just extinct, really, but forgotten among the general population inside the walls along with their counterparts, Alphas.

Omegas, and thus Armin, were different from most people in various ways; male omegas specifically could become pregnant if in a relationship with an alpha (Here Armin’s grandfather would look almost despondent, sighing again.) Armin, not particularly well versed on the nature of reproduction as it normally took place or fully aware of how strange what he was being told was, just accepted what he was being told. There were, after all, lots of things that had existed before the walls that didn’t anymore and this was just another of those things.

It was kind of a problem, because he was already so different from the other kids and this was just another thing they’d tease him about, undoubtedly.

Also he didn’t think he’d like to have children. Other kids were pretty awful to him and he couldn't really see how he’d enjoy having his own. Plus whenever he saw pregnant women they looked miserable and uncomfortable. He said as much and Dr. Yeager laughed loudly then nodded, telling Armin he was much too young to put any real thought into such things anyway. It was, however, important that Armin understood that he was different and what those differences would mean for him going forward.

He would go into heat from now on, every few months and hopefully on a regular schedule. This was the bodies way of saying it was ready to carry children. Heats in the future wouldn’t be as long or as painful as the one he’d just gone through because Dr Yeager knew a few ways to make it far more bearable.

He would find his sense of smell to be very powerful when he was around other people like himself. He’d be able to identify other Omegas and Alphas by scent alone but he wasn’t to approach these people unless he was sure it was sade.

It was, and this was when Dr. Yeager would become more serious than Armin had seen him since the day Mikasa had come to the village to live with the Yeagers, very important that no one know of this. If anyone found out that shouldn’t Armin would disappear, like the man in the story who dug to see how far the walls went down. (Armin knew the story but Eren said it wasn’t true and was just something adults told kids to keep them from asking questions about the wall.) Worse than that Armin’s grandfather would disappear and probably the Yeagers and Mikasa and everyone else Armin was close to.

That was part of the reason people like Armin were so rare; any time one came forward (probably brought by worried and confused parents to a doctor or clinic to seek help during the first heat) they would disappear as if they’d never existed. Dr. Yeager would answer any questions Armin had and help him as best he could but if ever there was a time that he couldn’t Armin would have to deal on his own. He couldn’t trust any other doctors.

It was a scary thing to hear as a child. Armin would swear he’d say nothing, not even to Eren, and from there Dr, yeager would talk about other less critical things like bonding and mating (Kind of like marriage but different and really Armin was too young to be concerned), but Armin couldn’t focus on anything beyond his own fear.

He would disappear? Be taken away and never seen again? Because he was some rare thing that was supposed to be extinct? Was what he was bad, dangerous like someone trying to dig under the walls, dangerous like books about the outside world? Dangerous like wishing to see the ocean?

He didn’t understand it, didn’t understand anything about the past few days even with an explanation. It was just too much.

Before he left Dr. Yeager would pop into his room, much to Armin’s embarrassment, then emerge with the shirt he’d woken up cuddled around. He’d smiled again then said he had to get it washed and back to Eren before anyone noticed it was gone.

Later that night when he was in bed his grandfather would sit on the edge of his bed and, in a soft mournful voice, say that he was worried he had failed Armin.

\-----

The next heat wasn’t as bad. He’d felt the warmth and the way his skin felt strangely tight and ill fitting over his body. He’d told his grandfather, fighting with the awkwardness of the situation due to new found knowledge in the matter of how babies were actually made and understanding that he, as a boy, wasn’t supposed to be able to get pregnant, and Dr. Yeager would stop by with a bottle of some greenish granulated powder and a piece of paper.

The powder would help him with the heat and the paper was instructions on how to make his own, how to dilute it properly with water, and how to administer it.

He still spent the time in his room but it passed in just 3 days without any of the confusion or anger of the first time. No fever and most of the discomfort was gone, though that empty feeling remained, and he figured he could have gone out if he really wanted to.

He worked on making the powder himself at his grandfather’s behest (He couldn’t rely on Grisha forever because who knew what the future might hold) and found it was a mixture of fairly common herbs, ground down then cooked until the moisture was gone and the powder remained. The items were easy to get his hands on, even out in the outer districts.

Before his third heat the wall would come down and titans would destroy everything he’d known. Everything would change, especially with Eren.

His best friend was angry, and justifiably so considering his mother’s death and father’s abandonment, and he’d fight more than before, swear and argue with anyone he could, and generally cause problems whenever possible. Eren talked about joining the military, becoming strong, and destroying all the titans with a sort of fevered look in his eyes that Armin had never seen before. The talk annoyed some people (a lot of people just wanted to start over or fade away and die, not listen to some orphan kid talk about revenge) but never Armin. Rather it made him determined to stay at Eren’s side and fight with him.

Though Eren’s scent might had influenced him just a little. Some time after they settled in with the refugees Eren’s already nice cinnamon scent changed and became...more. Stronger, deeper, headier, and always there. It brushed against Armin’s nose, sunk into his skin and clothing, wrapped around his brain and just...reached out to him. It made his mouth water and skin flush. When Eren touched him (And Eren was always touching him all of a sudden. Brushing against him when they walked, nudging him when they were sitting around, fingers lingering over his own when they passed things around, shuffling around to fill the tiny space between Armin and Mikasa when they slept until they eventually gave in and pushed their sleeping mats together, the 3 of them cramming into the space 2 should inhabit) his skin tingled and when Eren smiled his throat went dry. When his heat came around there was a constant buzzing in his brain, urges he was afraid to name making themselves known and all centering around Eren.

He became aware that soon Eren started to smell like him, cinnamon touched with salty sweetness, and that he had a touch of spice to his own scent, taletell traces of Eren.

Then his grandfather was drafted to help take back the wall and never returned. Armin didn’t go into heat for six months after that and by then they were in training for the military. He’d been terrified during the physicals, so sure that even though his body seemed normal enough (to him at least) outside of his heats one of the doctors would  notice something was different and he and his two friends would be taken somewhere, never to be seen again.  

When it didn’t happen he was relieved, for the most part. Between that and the lack of his heats maybe his body had changed and he was becoming normal and that would be a good thing, wouldn’t it?

Except he’d probably stop being able to smell Eren like he did and something about that made him sad.

 

\---

 

The 104th was an enlightening experience. He was finally able to understand why Eren’s scent stood out to him so much; Eren was like he was.

Well.

Not like him exactly.

Armin became aware that he could catch the scent of certain other members of his training squad in the same way he could scent Eren. Oh, there were differences of course; no one’s scent made his head fuzzy or heart clench like Eren’s did. And, with a time, he could note that there were some distinct differences, two kinds of scent.

Lighter, softer, almost sweet: Armin himself, Bertolt, and Krista fell into this category.

Heavier, thicker, ‘dark’: Eren, Reiner, Annie, and Marco hit these notes.

Then there was Jean but Jean was strange to Armin’s nose and he couldn’t really explain it but, on the upside, Jean was an asshole and lived to push Eren’s buttons so he didn’t have to spare the other blond much thought.

Armin wasn’t sure what to make of the scents, though he knew to some degree that it meant they were all different from the people around them.

He got answers from Annie during his first heat as a trainee. He’d felt the symptoms, dug out the powder, and begged off from breakfast with the others, claiming to be sick. He’d wandered out into the forest that surrounded the training camp, wanting some time to himself. It was his first heat since his grandfather had died and he could feel that it was sweeping over him, dragging him down faster than it usually did. He was afraid it would be a repeat of his first heat, which would be pretty hard to hide from others, instead of the easy heats he’d had since, which allowed him to go about his day and even sleep curled up with Eren and Mikasa without issue.

Well, no issues that cold showers and careful monitoring of the slick fluid he leaked didn’t take care of.

Annie would creep up on him, silent until she was practically on top of him, then flop down next to him while extracting the bottle from his hands. She sniffed it curiously, seemingly oblivious to Armin’s look of horror, then handed it back, eyebrow going up just slightly.

“You’re in heat. I've been wondering ‘how did an omega like him make it this far without detection?’” She tilted her head to the side while tucking a strand of hair that’d come loose from her ponytail back behind her ear. “But now I know. So now the question is how did you come across this? Heat suppressant isn’t exactly something in every pharmacy is it?”

Armin’s mouth dropped open and he looked around, heart racing as he tried to decide between running off and...and what? Fighting Annie? She’d kick his ass. Maybe coming out here by himself had been a bad idea. Maybe he should have come clean with Eren a long time ago or just claimed the bottle was full of...vitamins or something and drank it back in the barracks. 

“I. um. I have to go.”

“Okay. Don’t tell me.” Icy blue eyes reflected indifference. “Not my business is it?”

She leaned closer, shifting so she was on her hands and knees, and pressed her face into his neck. He went still, bottle slipping from his fingers. He wanted to push her away and then get the hell away to think about what exactly was going on here, but she smelled cool and fresh, like snow, and it was suddenly in his nose and overwhelming him, turning his brain hazy.

Something warm and wet brushed over his throat and he made a whimpering noise. Annie laughed quietly and he felt her lips spreading into a smile.

“But. I can help you out.”

He blinked, not sure what to make of that, but could only manage a strangled gasp when she licked him again, in the same spot, then bit down gently. His mind went blank as sparks ran up his spine.

She would explain later, while carding her fingers through his hair and keeping him from putting his pants back on, that he had a scent gland right under the place she’d bit down. She’d take his hand and put it over her throat; he could feel something firm under the skin and when he pressed down lightly her eyes went glassy and her lips parted in a sharp gasp. Then she’d lick her lips and press him back into the dirt, eyes gleaming.

Annie knew a lot of things that Armin didn’t about alphas and omegas and was willing to share that knowledge, among other things. He thought about asking her how exactly she knew what she did but considering she didn’t ask questions about the little bit he knew fairness dictated he just accept it all at face value.

She talked about Alphas and knots and mating (in graphic detail with a filthy smile while she pulled his hair and forced him to show his neck) and bonds (This she talked about in a softer voice, fingers petting him gently.) Bonds were forever; you could form shallows ones, making the intent to be with a person known to everyone who was capable of smelling it (he pretended to miss her meaningful look), but a real bond involved biting and blood and sex and being part of someone, in their head and in their blood.

It sounded terrifying and wonderful.  

She suggested he keep taking the suppressant because fooling around once or twice a heat, while fun, wasn’t the same as a proper knotting. It would help, of course, and with the suppressant his symptoms were basically non-existent. He felt normal.

Normal enough anyway.

Except that every time he’d slink out to see Annie at night then crawl back just before the sun rose to climb into bed next to Eren he felt incredibly guilty. Something inside of him told him he was betraying his friend, that what he was doing was wrong and that it was Eren he should have been with.

The feeling faded when he was actually with Annie; her crisp heavy scent wrapped around him and her calloused hands moved over his skin, playing him like an instrument and it was hard to think about anything but her and her bright eyes.

It wasn’t until graduation was looming over them that he asked her about the feeling. She stopped pulling her hair back and instead invaded his space again, hair falling like a curtain around their faces.

“No matter how much of my scent I put on you by morning you smell like Yeager again.” Her lips brushed over his lightly. “That’s why I can’t get a knot going you know? Only happens when an alpha is in rut and that can only happen with a bondmate and you are already ‘a little bit’ bonded to Eren. Which...is a waste.” She pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth then stood up, tossing a wave over her shoulder.

He was positive they’d never be doing this again.

 

\----

 

He felt something pulling, stretching thin inside of him, and it took his breath away. He couldn’t do anything, body numb and unresponsive, as he stared at Eren, standing in the bearded titan’s mouth, bloody and missing his leg but swearing that they’d go outside the walls one day. Blue-green eyes stared at him, through him, right to his core. Eren reached and he found himself moving, reaching out.

The titan’s jaws closed with enough force to sever Eren’s arm and send it careening past him.

The thing inside of him snapped and it felt like something was tearing, ripping apart in his chest and everything went dim.

Armin heard someone screaming and realized, distantly, that it must have been him. He fell to his knees, blind to the world, only the sound of his own screams in his ears.

There had been something, a warm comforting presence like favorite blanket, that he hadn’t even known was there but now it was gone and everything felt exposed and raw and wrong and like he was being torn apart piece by piece.

Armin knew he couldn’t live with this.

He was going to die.

Anything would be better than this so he hoped that death would find him fast.

 

\----

 

When he found out Marco was dead Armin went to find Jean. Found the taller teen sitting on a rooftop, staring out at the world with empty eyes. Jean greeted him, voice hollow, but Armin was fairly certain Jean didn’t actually *see* him.

“I’m sorry about Marco.”

He could smell Marco, something like syrup and pine, on Jean. It hadn’t begun to fade yet, though it was never as heavy a scent as Eren was on Armin, and wondered if Jean could smell it, or if he even wanted to.

Jean had picked up a smell of his own recently, so light it was barely there, and it hadn’t yet had a chance to rub off onto Marco and there was something very sad about that. For the moment the smell of tears and grief, sour like rotting fruit, mingled with the syrup and pine.

He’d tried to find something of Marco’s, something covered in that smell, to bring to Jean but now that he was here, holding the shirt, he felt kind of stupid.

Jean’s eyes flickered to his hands, to the shirt, and Armin watched his eyes focus for a moment then start to go glassy with tears.

Armin sat next to him and handed the shirt over. Jean bowed his head, shoulders shaking even as he made no noise.

Armin thought about how he’d been ready to die because he’d thought Eren was dead. He’d gone so far as to ask Mikasa to take his blades and gas, asked her to leave him behind one blade so he could kill himself and she’d refused. He was grateful now but in that moment he’d hated her almost as much as the titan who’d swallowed Eren. The hurt had been all he could feel, the gaping empty hole inside of him, the white hot pain under his skin, the squeezing in his heart and burning in his eyes...there was only that pain.

Why would she deny him the ability to be free from that?

Of course Eren wasn’t dead. Instead he was somehow able to turn into a titan and delighted in tearing apart other titans. He’d plugged the hole in the wall; it had been tense and Armin wasn’t sure his frantic plan would work at all but Eren had pulled through. This should have been a moment of victory, of joy because they’d won this battle.

But instead he was on a roof with his heart aching for Jean Kirstein, known unrepentant asshole who took delight in annoying others.

On some level Armin felt like he owed it to Jean to be here with him because he was deliriously happy that it was Marco who was gone and not Eren. Happy that the thing that had snapped was already repairing itself, that Eren’s scent was fresh on his skin, and that the warm presence that he now knew was Eren was back, faint in the back of his mind.

“I’m going to join the survey corps.”

Armin exhaled. “Do you think that’s what Marco would want?”

Jean looked at him, brown eyes bloodshot and so shattered that Armin had to look away, stare hard at the horizon. “Marco is dead.”

And Eren wasn’t and Armin was glad.

“I’m sorry.”

 

\------

 

When Eren told them that he thought his father was the cause of his titan shifting abilities Armin found himself thinking back on the day after his first heat broke, found himself remembering those strange smiles Dr. Yeager had graced him with.

Thought about how Dr. Yeager had brought him Eren’s shirt, somehow knowing it would calm him down. Thought about his grandfather’s sad looks.

Frowned slightly then, shaking his head, decided what ever had been done was done now.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Uhhhh. ...idk. I'm gonna go back to working on Four Door now.


End file.
